KINGMAN – Twice the Kingman Academy Tigers have suffered two losses this season. Twice they’ve lost the turnover battle in a bad way.

The Academy (1-2, 2A Central) coughed it up five times against Lee Williams (2-1, 4A Grand Canyon) Friday and found itself on the wrong side of a 12-7 score.

“We have to limit turnovers somehow,” said KAHS football coach Dan Stroup. “We’ve got to get rid of the turnover bug.”

The Academy’s opening week loss to Bourgade Catholic, 28-27, came about as the Tigers gave away seven turnovers.

Despite Lee Williams’ vast edge in turnovers, 5-1, the Academy had a chance to pull out the win down the stretch. A holding call with just over a minute left negated a 27-yard pass play for Tigers, and gave them second-and-a-country-mile from their own 48. The ball was caught by Nate Carter on the Vols 8-yard line.

“You can call one of those in high school football on every pass play,” Stroup said. “It just seems in this game we always get one of these weird calls. I hate to say that, but it’s been that way for three years.”

True or not, five turnovers against a team fighting for its life had a lot to with the Tigers’ loss.

“Hats off to those guys,” the coach said. “They came out with a good thing. I said we had to keep ‘3’ (Paul Giglio) in check the whole night and we did that except for one play.”

That was when Giglio went up the middle and ran for a 46-yard touchdown in the third quarter to give the Vols the first lead of the game, 6-0.

Quarterback Kekoa Makaiwi-Stroup completed 8 of 16 passes for 90 yards and a touchdown. He connected with Carter on a nine-yard pass in the third quarter. He threw two interceptions, the second coming as the Tigers tried to recover from the holding call with 1 minute, 15 seconds left in the game.

“Now we open with league and travel to Camp and try to get well,” Stroup said. “I thought up to the end we were going to pull this out. But then came the flag.”

Academy begins 2A Central Region action at Camp Verde (0-2) at 7 p.m. Friday. The Cowboys game against Arete Prep two days ago was cancelled. No further information was known before deadline.